starbuck

It was the week before Christmas, and '24' actress Katee Sackhoff was at her parents' home in rural Oregon, taking care of two sick dogs and doing press interviews. About to turn 30 in April, she didn't come off at all as someone whose career was undergoing a high-profile transition.

In mid-January, she was to return to the set of Fox's clock-ticking drama to finish out her first season as CTU computer analyst Dana Walsh. Last spring, her role as tough-broad fighter pilot Kara "Starbuck" Thrace on Syfy's landmark 'Battlestar Galactica' had come to an end.

I'll be honest, I don't remember hearing about this big budget mini-series of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick before. But If they do it authentically enough, they'll be guaranteed millions of DVD sales and rentals by high school and college kids who damned sure aren't going to read the book for English class.

It's being put together by Germany's RTL, Austria's ORF and Robert Halmi's RHI. That means it's an RTLORFRHI production, which makes me ROFLMAO. Unfortunately, viewers in the USA are SOL as it currently has no network deal here.

That could change with this big casting news. The $25 million Moby-Dick mini-series has brought William Hurt and Ethan Hawke aboard. They'll be playing the obsessed Captain Ahab and defiant first mate Starbuck, respectively. It looks like there'll be a lot of CGI and effects representing the whale, which is a shame because we could have had a lot of politically incorrect fun casting that role. Maybe SYTYCD's Mary Murphy could be the voice of the whale, which would explain Ahab's obsession to shut it up permanently.

There are those who liked the ending and those that didn't. I didn't like the lack of explanation of Kara's return from the dead and found the finale generally anti-climactic. But the series set a high standard and, overall, it's a minor complaint. In most ways, the series is perfect and far better than most of us deserve.

I'll give them this: the people who make the show know their audience ... that audience being nerds. Nerds like information. Hence, the DVD set is full of extras and special features. These include deleted scenes, behind-the-scenes featurettes, and extended versions of episodes, including the three-part finale, "Daybreak." And every episode (let me repeat that:: every episode) has podcast commentary by Ronald Moore.

(S04E18) I know it's a little late in the game to make this sort of observation, what with the show having only two episodes left, but if I were to compare characters in this show to characters in Gilligan's Island, I would say that Six is Ginger, Eight is Mary Ann and President Roslin is Mrs. Howell. Adama would naturally be the Skipper and Tigh would be Gilligan. I'm still working on Mr. Howell and the Professor.

In the beginning of the episode, either in someone's fantasy or projection or reality, Hera is moving the Galactica in a position next to the enemy Cylon fleet. Foreshadowing?

(S04E17) Before I go all spoilery on tonight's episode, what was the tattoo on Starbuck's back? It looked like a temple of some sort. Was it the Temple of Five?

Tonight's episode had its share of "what the frak" moments. It had some revelations, but it created more mystery than it solved. I was a little annoyed at the tease of learning the secret behind Starbuck's resurrection that ultimately didn't happen.

(S04E16) We've reached "The Final Five" on a few levels. Ellen Tigh is back, and it's good to know that despite being part of a species with a potentially infinite lifespan, she still gets jealous when her husband has a baby with someone else.

The minute Ellen came back, I knew the baby would miscarry. I believe it was Tigh, as one of the Cylon progenitors, that was keeping the unborn Liam alive (if the Cylons do in fact need love to survive). Once Ellen came back, it caused conflicting feelings and the baby was done for. I wonder if Caprica Six will try to exact revenge as a result and we'll see a Cylon catfight.

(S04E05) Like so many TV shows before it (such as 24), Battlestar Galactica is built on those "what the frak" moments in which the revelations continue to astound us. Between those WTF moments, there has to be some sort of explanation as to why the moment happened and the events leading to those moments. They're not as much fun, and rabid fanboys have a tendency to nitpick the frak out of them, but they're necessary to the narrative. Tonight's episode was heavy on exposition and light on WTF.

Obviously, we learned that Ellen Tigh resurrected (no surprise there) and she was apparently in charge of the project from 2000 years ago which created the human-style Cylon race. I didn't even catch all of the explanation. The following is what I did understand:

(S04E14) It is impossible to have a bad episode of Battlestar Galactica. Even a bad episode is better than most of the other crap on TV. Fortunately, this was the opposite of a bad episode.

Obviously, there was no question about how this entire coup was going to end. Our heroes have way too much spunk to let little worms like Gaeta and Zarek control their ship for long. This is actually a rare case on the show of a neat wrap-up of a plot-line (and since we only have six episodes left, we'll probably see more wrap-ups, some of which might be neat).

(S04E12) "There are days when I really hate this job." - Admiral Adama

Ron Moore's directorial debut! It was a good one (although not as good as last week). It probably helped that he also wrote the episode.

A long-nagging question of mine was answered in tonight's episode: if Cylons can't procreate and Tyrol was a Cylon, then how could he have a kid with Cally? The answer was that the kid wasn't his. It does leave the question of Tigh and Six's baby. Can the Final Five procreate with other Cylons? And who is that guy that is the father of Cally's son? I didn't recognize him. Has he appeared previously? This plot point seemed out of the blue. Also, they seem certain that Tigh is the father, but could it possibly be Baltar instead?

(S04E11) Note: technically the Razor television movie counts as the first two episodes of the season, so this is actually episode 13. And what an episode it was! It answered the biggest question from the viewers and in the process created a few more.

FYI, the episode title is taken from the folk song "Goodnight, Irene", which pretty much fits the theme of the episode.

I really liked Mary McDonnell's acting in this episode. I felt heartbroken at her breakdown upon discovering the remains of Earth and her inability to share the information with the fleet. Whenever things get bad, at least we're not on the run from homicidal machines with our last great hope for sanctuary a radioactive wasteland.

Pity Felix Gaeta. First, he was almost shot out of an airlock. Then he lost a leg. Now, it looks like he's in for one long, terrible day in "The Face of the Enemy," the 10-part Battlestar Galactia webisode series that premiered today on SciFi.com.

Click through for more, somewhat spoilery, info about the first chapter of "Enemy," written by Jane Espenson and Seamus Kevin Fahey. You'll also find the full webisode schedule and a larger version of the new Season 4.5 poster featuring Starbuck's, er, chest after the jump.

(S04E07) I'm going to go out on a limb (no pun ... oh hell, pun intended) and assume it's not a huge spoiler to mention the fate of Gaeta's leg here, before the jump. Most people in last week's poll thought it was "as good as gone," and they were right. The songs Gaeta sang in the infirmary, along with the haunting music of Bear McCreary, were very well done. While we have some minor (and sometimes major) characters dying episode-to-episode, not so much feeling has been put into them as has been with Gaeta's amputation. Sad, yet beautiful.

I was in the shower thinking about Battlestar Galactica the other day. The thought occupying my mind was: Who is the final Cylon? That is the big mystery this season, after all.

The writers of BSG have a huge challenge in choosing the final Cylon. They already shocked us with the season finale last year when we learned that Tigh, Chief, Torre and Sam are Cylons. Who could possibly be more shocking than that? The final Cylon can't be some character who suddenly appears this season and has a major role, just so he/she can be the final Cylon. I truly doubt it's either Pres. Roslin or Adm. Adama because that might be too over-the-top and therefore unbelievable. Of course, the writers could easily take us there over the season and make it shocking, yet believable. (These BSG writers really do rock, don't they?)

So, I thought about it. And here are the five characters who would make a shocking final Cylon:

(S04E05) It looks like Sci Fi took to heart some of the complaints over last week's online preview. This week they weren't so vague, making it crystal clear how much of a preview we were going to get. If nothing else, I could skip over the first ten minutes of the episode when it aired on TV.

As we heard tonight, the mission of the Demitrius is nearing the end of its 60-day mission, and there's noticeable tension on-board. Two months doesn't really seem all that long, but then I got to thinking -- what is a "day" to the humans as related to Earth time? Are we to assume Caprica has the same cycles as Earth? I know, I'm digressing here, but I do wonder how they differentiate a day amongst all of the different colonies, then simply say "a day" on Galactica. Most likely they have a military-set definition for it.

(S04E03) At the conclusion of last week's episode, I made mention of how quickly things were moving along, specifically with the Cylon Centurions' evolution. I thought for sure things would settle down this week, but they gave me a surprise. Hell, I think they gave everyone a surprise. Sorta.